Flood Finds

Here's a couple of old, old UFOs that were unearthed by the flood in the basement. I think I bought them in the winter of 2002/03 when I was visiting Toronto, before I moved back here.  They are limited edition cross stitch designs from Lizzie Kate, Clara and Henry O'Hare:

They probably have not seen the light of day for 8 years until now!  I knew they were there but I've not been keen to finish them.  Henry was already done:

You may have noticed that I changed the colour of his fur.  The pattern calls for quite a dark, steel grey which I thought was just too cold.  Except for the fur and the backstitching, which are done with solid coloured DMC threads, all the rest of the stitching uses The Gentle Art's Sampler Threads.  I remember that I was pretty annoyed when I bought the kits, only to get them home and find the threads weren't included!  I'm sure that is part of the reason they have been buried in a hole in the wall for eight years.  I think I was holding a grudge!

But there is no reason not to finish them now, so I've made a start on Clara over the past two days:

It does not get any easier than this!  But I can use something completely stress-free these days, so they're a good pattern for now.  And you can see the hand-dyed threads are nice.

Pink and blue are not my favourite colours, so I think I may make these into pillow covers and sell them through my quilt guild at some future event.  They were meant to be stand-up ornaments, but all the charms and other doo-dads that came in the kit have not done well over time.  I don't know what possessed me to buy them in the first place, but I guess I was probably desperate for a project during my vacation!

Other UFOs have come to light as well, but I'm not sure if I'll be taking them on too right now.  Soon it'll be cool enough to start quilting again, and I am SO keen to get back to that!

Thanks to everyone who asked about my Dad.  He is being monitored right now, and they may adjust his pacemaker if necessary.  Hopefully he will take it easier from now on!

Flood Update

As you can imagine, I've been completely swamped (*rolls eyes*) by dealing with the flood in our basement the past week.  Plus, the flood happened just as I was in the trickiest part of setting up a new website for my quilt guild Rouge Valley.  I've been stretched to the limit for several days now.  The flood remediation process has been quite difficult, and punctuated by a trip to the emergency room for my dad's heart.  So it's been pretty stressful all around.

The only vaguely stitchy thing I've been doing is knitting.  The front and back are done on the Paisley Sweater, and I'm halfway up the first sleeve.  I can't say when I'll be able to organize a photo, though.

Two weeks ago I was thinking that my "sewing machine holiday" has not been the greatest success.  I have not enjoyed it.  I really enjoy handwork as a break from working on the machine, but just handwork all the time became tedious pretty quickly.  So that's good to know.

Of course, I haven't had time to be bored since the flood.  Nature always fills a void!  From now on I'll be more careful about leaving one.  ;)

Flood!

Our basement flooded this morning.  Fortunately, it was not widespread, but unfortunately, it was right where I keep my stash!

I woke up to heavy rain, and when I looked outside the street was flooded, so I went straight down to the basement.  The usual problem areas looked ok, but then I heard water rushing in the room where I keep my stash.  I'm sure you can imagine my horror when I saw that the window well (like the one in the photo) was completely full of water.  It was gushing through the seams in the glass and literally falling in a little waterfall down my plastic storage bins.

So much water fell so quickly that our neighbourhood storm sewers were completely overloaded, so all the water from the eavestroughs and window wells had nowhere to go.  On the side of the house that flooded you can see how the water was running over the grass:

Fortunately we were able to bail out the window well just as the rain was slowing down, so the damage seems confined to just the one room.  Thank goodness for the plastic bins, because it doesn't look like any of my stash was damaged, even in the bins that were directly under the waterfall.  Several other cardboard boxes were damaged, but I don't think I had anything too fragile in them.  The carpet will probably have to be removed, and maybe the plywood subfloor as well.  Fortunately again, it was just rainwater and not sewage, otherwise this would all be another story!

There's nothing like a minor disaster to make you realize that you have too much stuff.  Hopefully this will motivate us to do some clearing out!

Banner Corners and Borders

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally realized in April that I had to simplify the design for my banner, because I still wanted the stitcheries themselves to be the focal point.  These little 2" finished square-in-a-square blocks were an idea that I had rejected early on.  But when I looked at the stitcheries I realized that the designer Jim Shore had put different blocks in each corner of his borders, so I could make my blocks more interesting by varying the colours!  I went to my stash and pulled the fabrics to match the stitching.

I mentioned a few days ago that I planned right from the beginning to use Flying Geese around the sides of the stitcheries.  I also planned all along to do them in green and yellow, echoing the colours of the top border which are consistent on all three pieces:

But during my final design phase in April I worried that green and yellow would be too high contrast, too busy, and therefore distract from the stitcheries.  I went to my stash looking for two shades of green instead, and found these:

I really, really love this fabric combination!  The small print against the big one, the slightly warmer geese versus the cooler background, the geese are defined without being "in your face."  These sections will finish at 2" x 6" each. I am foundation paper piecing them, which I did for the corners as well, using my own home made foundations copied onto vellum.  They are quite slow to sew, but at least the points are perfect!  There will be 10 in all.  Here's a preview of how it will all look together:

Imagine if I had gone ahead with those stumpwork daisies!  This is so much better.

I took advantage of a break in the humidity last week to piece these side sections, but I still have six left, so I think it will still be a while before this is finished.  I have found, though, that I stay cooler working on something small like this, rather than trying to manage large pieces of fabric and long seams.

There will also be a little bit of needleturn applique in the triangle at the bottom.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you that soon!


Previous Posts:

Percy Pig

Sophie Sheep

Clarissa Cow

Clarissa Cow

You saw yesterday that Sophie had a nice quilt on her back.  Clarissa's blanket also features a great quilt block:

I think the colours stand out beautifully against her black and white cowhide!

Quilt blocks are featured throughout these designs, in the blankets and also in the upper corners, so sewing them into a quilted banner seems like a natural evolution.  My first plan was to put a solid fabric border around them, with just enough quilting to hold it all together.  Then last summer both my quilt guilds were sending out reminders for us to submit our quilts for their shows in the fall.  Wouldn't it be nice, I thought, to put some fancy pieced borders on these cross stitches (the last one, Clarissa here, was almost done), and enter them into the show(s)?  Well, I missed the entry deadline, and it is probably just as well, because the shows are long over and I am still not done!

That "fancy pieced border" turned out to be quite a sticking point.  Once I had the idea I couldn't give it up and go back to the original simple plan.  I came up with the idea to put 1" x 2" Flying Geese around the sides almost right away, and that part has stuck.  But the big question has been what to do in the corners.  The plan got more and more elaborate!  First I thought about tiny pinwheels.  Then I was obsessed with daisies.  Maybe I could design a little cross stitch daisy for the point at the end?  What about thread painting it?  Maybe I could fussy cut some daisy fabric?  At one point I thought I would do stumpwork daisies in the corners.  Thank goodness I backed away from that!

Finally in April I went back and pulled out the actual stitcheries again for inspiration.  This seems more reasonable:

Stay tuned!

Previous Posts:

Percy Pig

Sophie Sheep

Sophie Sheep

There were a heck of a lot of beads on Sophie!  I was surprised by how long they took.  But they give her a nice curly-looking coat.  The beads look great in the flowers and vines in the borders, too:

Once I had decided that I wanted to use fabric instead of the perforated paper that comes with the kits, I knew that I would still prefer aida over an evenweave for these projects.  The beads are heavy, so I wanted a fabric that could hold them.  The cross stitches are also done with three strands, which gives them a nice full look on the 14 count fabric.  At first I looked for a fabric that would match the colours of the perforated papers, which were in pastels.  But when I saw this natural linen aida at Nordic Needle, I was sold!  I love the traditional look of natural linen, and I think it complements the folksy designs, while the darker colour provides good contrast to the bright threads and beads.  Nordic Needle still sells it.

You can see that Sophie stands out quite nicely from the darker neutral of the background:

And I love the little basket block on the quilt on her back.  Stay tuned, the tale continues tomorrow!

Previous post:

Percy Pig

Percy Pig

That's a pretty gorgeous little blanket for a pig, right?  It belongs to this guy:

This is one of three farm animal designs in cross stitch and beading that Jim Shore did for Mill Hill a while ago.  You may still be able to find them.  Jim Shore did a whole bunch of fun designs for Mill Hill, which I immediately loved, but waffled about for quite a while.

Like most Mill Hill kits, these came with 14 count perforated paper, and are designed to fit into a 6" square frame (which is also available).  They are fun and easy projects, but the question soon becomes what to do with them all?  I think that in general, this is a big issue for stitchers.  No matter how elegant the designs may be, once you start littering your walls with a bunch of tiny pictures you have lost any claim to good interior design.  I usually handle this by grouping together smaller pictures into sets - those Lanarte butterflies, for example, are hung stacked vertically over a bedside table.

These designs, though, I felt were more seasonal, and just in a grey area near too whimsical, so not something I wanted to hang permanently.  So I didn't buy them.  Then one day it occured to me that I could stitch them on fabric instead, and sew them together into a quilted banner.  For me it was one of those Eureka moments!  That was almost two years ago now.  So yes, this is another UFO.

Tune in tomorrow for the continuing saga!